The Internet comprises a vast number of computers and computer networks that are interconnected through communication links. These computers exchange information using various services, such as electronic mail, FTP, Gopher, and the World Wide Web (“the WWW” or “the Web”). The Web is a system for publishing information in which users may use a Web browser application to retrieve information (e.g., Web pages) from Web servers and display that information.
The Web has also increasingly become a medium that is used to shop for and order items (such as products and/or services) that are for purchase, rent, lease, license, trade, evaluation, sampling, etc. Some such items may be available to be delivered electronically to a purchaser over the Internet (e.g., music), while other items (e.g., paperback books) may instead be delivered through physical distribution channels (e.g., a common carrier). In many circumstances, a user can visit the Website (or “Web site”) of a Web merchant that sells an item, view information about the item, give an instruction to purchase the item, and provide information needed to complete the purchase (e.g., payment and shipping information). After receiving an order for one or more items, the Web merchant then fulfills the order. The order fulfillment process typically used by Web merchants for items that are to be physically shipped shares similarities with other item ordering services that ship ordered items (e.g., catalog-based shopping, such as from mail-order companies).
The ordering of items from a Web merchant is often based on the “shopping cart” model. In that model, when a purchaser selects an item, the merchant's server computer system metaphorically adds that item to a shopping cart for the purchaser. When the purchaser is done selecting items, then all the items in the shopping cart are “checked out” (i.e., ordered) when the purchaser provides billing and shipment information. In some models, when a purchaser selects any one item, then that item is “checked out” by automatically prompting the user for the billing and shipment information.
Although shopping at a Web merchant can provide various advantages, shopping at conventional Web merchants is not always as convenient as it might be. For example, many conventional Web merchants may allow (at most) only a single delivery address and delivery manner (e.g., type of shipping) to be associated with each user, thus making it difficult for users to send different items to different locations and/or in different manners. Moreover, even if a conventional Web merchant allows multiple different delivery addresses and delivery manners to be associated with a user, such Web merchants typically do not provide advanced tools to allow a user to easily manage the use of the various delivery addresses and delivery manners, such as to automatically associate delivery addresses and/or delivery manners with groups of one or more items that may be ordered by the user.
Thus, it would be beneficial to have a more convenient approach to determining how to deliver one or more items that are ordered by a user. In particular, it would be beneficial to allow multiple delivery addresses and/or delivery manners to be associated with a user, and to provide various mechanisms to allow the user to easily manage the use of the various associated delivery addresses and delivery manners.